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Friday, 08 June 2007

CatCam and Other Pet Projects

You might not think the picture above is terribly impressive, but...it was taken by a cat.

Seems a German guy living in South Carolina named Jürgen Perthold has modified an inexpensive digital camera so it could be worn by his cat, Mr. Lee (right, with CatCam at
ready). Mr. Lee has since become an accomplished and inveterate photographer, dutifully documenting his trips to the woods (he found a snake), his water dish, well-framed views of his house from a distance, and so forth. Presumably, the picture above, taken from underneath a car, is a portrait of one of Mr. Lee's associates. The modification of the camera wasn't trivial, either—the CatCam website takes you through it step-by-step, just in case you should be the owner of a cat and in dire need of a project. (The website has gotten so many hits that its former hosting service banned it. The link is to Mr. Lee's new online representation.)

Meanwhile, over on the Rangefinder Forum, Dr. Leo B.—presumably dissatisfied by the M8, or else acting under the "Mt. Everest Principle"—perpetrated the following on an otherwise innocent Leica M3. Voilá—digital rangefinder. Although its creator admits it's ugly, it actually works, making Dr. B. at least three times as clever as me.

_____________

Mike

Featured Comment by David Goldfarb: The idea of putting a small camera with an intervalometer on an animal is not entirely new or ridiculous.

Here are a couple of photographs of Julius Neubronner's pigeon camera, patented in 1903.

Pigeon cameras were used for aerial reconnaissance during WWI. You can find a hi-res image of a WWI pigeon camera on this page.

Since the flight path of a pigeon is somewhat more predictable than that of a cat, the timer could be set to improve the probability of obtaining useful images.

Mike adds: And I feel a potential conflict brewing. God forbid a cat with a CatCam should eat a pigeon with a spy camera...the visuals don't bear contemplating.

When I read about this project two days ago and looked it up when the new site was live, my first thought was, 'That's Art.' with a capital 'a' though Mr Perthold did not call it such. It's not the individual photos - clearly not when it comes to technical brilliance - but the project as a whole.

Isn't art a way to get a new perspective on the world? Just what Perthold and Mr Lee do - giving us a new view of things we thought we know in and out.

Richard,
Actually that other post was not about PH per se. It was about the fact that a simple Paparazzi snapshot could net you $500k. Man, when I think of all the work I've put in to earn small fractions of that by making photographs, it just makes me throw up my hands, shake my head, etc.

The catcam is one of the most amazing projects I've seen in quite some time! The images give me this strange out of body experience that I cannot describe? Maybe it is just understanding the fact that these images were taken by a non-human photographer? Great link, thanks!

I don't think there's a lot of difference between me taking pictures and the cat taking them. It's in the editing, the tossing of the bad ones, the showing of the good ones. It's the showing that makes the photographer, I think. Hope the cat has a good agent. From the examples shown, it looks like he does! HA HA!